10 October 2016

What Is Wrong With Denver DA Mitch Morrissey?

Moses-EL spent 28 years in state prison for a 1987 rape in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood that he has said he didn’t commit. The only evidence against him was that the victim said his identity came to her in a dream – after she had named three other men as her possible attackers. The first man she named, LC Jackson, since has confessed to the assault.

Partly because of an error made by district attorneys, Denver police threw all the DNA evidence in the case in a dumpster.

A Denver district judge vacated Moses-EL’s conviction last December. Despite a lack of evidence against Moses-EL – and Jackson’s sworn confession in court – DA Mitch Morrissey’s office said last winter it will re-prosecute the case.

The trial is set to begin November 7, 2016, two months before his term ends and a day before he becomes a lame duck.

It is hard to see how this prosecution produces a conviction that can hold up.

Morrissey's departure won't be a moment too soon.

In Other Colorado Criminal Justice Injustice News

A former Sterling Correctional Facility inmate suffering multiple physical disabilities repeatedly asked to be transferred away from an inmate who threatened him and choked him with his own cane, but instead guards put him in the same cell with the man.

Soon after Anthony Cipriano was placed in a cell with Kirk Popken, the man Cipriano feared, Popken attacked him from behind, fracturing his skull and nearly killing him.

On Friday, Boulder attorney Alison Ruttenberg filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of Cipriano naming two correctional officers, identified only as “Sgt. Nelson and Officer Brown,” as defendants.

Cipriano, who is currently on parole in Southern Colorado, is seeking damages and attorneys fees, claiming that his Constitutional rights to be free of cruel and unusual punishment were violated.

The victim's physical disabilities are also largely attributable to events during previous periods of incarceration for the same offense.

The lawsuit says that a prison health care worker also took away Cipriano’s wheelchair in retaliation after Cipriano called her “fat,” requiring him to walk with excruciating pain because a piece of metal was lodged in his right foot, the lawsuit says.

Cipriano was sentenced to four years in prison in 2011 for a conviction of stalking and violating a protection order. He broke his hip in the Douglas County jail and was required to wear adult diapers following an infection in his pelvis because he had no bowel control, the lawsuit says. He also suffered from the foot infection.

The case number in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado for Cipriano v. Nelson is 1:16-cv-02510. It was filed on October 7, 2016